The orcas
in the western Atlantic have received little study. We know they
were common enough to serve as a prominent subject for the art and
rituals of the people who lived in Newfoundland and Labrador 3,000
years ago. The most famous artifacts taken from Port aux Choix
National Historic Site on the west coast of the island of
Newfoundland are orca effigies carved in bone. These people lived
off the whales, seals, salmon, and cod of the rich north Atlantic as
did the orcas they undoubtedly shared the coastline with. Today
orcas are considered to be a rare sight in the west Atlantic from
Nova Scotia south.

There are
no known studies of northwest Atlantic orcas until after World War
II. Early European art works tell us they were observed in the 1500s
when the first whalers came to Newfoundland and Labrador, but since
orcas were too fast, too small, and maybe too smart to catch, they
were probably ignored.

With the
more modern whaling practices in the 19th century, orcas became the
hunting partners of human whalers. They sometimes waited outside
North American ports such as Gloucester, Provincetown and Bedford
joining whaling boats as they left port on their hunts. Once at sea,
the orcas chased larger whales towards the waiting harpoons of the
whalers and attacked the panicked whales from below while the
harpoons rained down from above. After World War I, the iron boats
of the whalers turned their harpoons on the orcas, now viewed as
competitors, and soon the orcas learned to avoid humans.

The orcas
continued to be ignored — or just occasionally hunted — until after
World War II when commercial fishermen and whalers began to consider
them a competitor for the ever dwindling number of large whales. In
Iceland, the government encouraged the American Navy to use orcas as
living targets for anti-submarine warfare exercises. In April 1954,
Time magazine reported, "… killer whales… savage sea cannibals with
teeth like bayonets… one was caught with 14 seals and 13 porpoises
in its belly… have destroyed thousands of dollars worth of fishing
tackle… Icelandic Government appealed to the U.S., which has
thousands of men stationed at a lonely NATO airbase. The bored G.I.s
responded with enthusiasm… one posse of Americans… in one morning
wiped out a pack of 100 killers… ".

The
whalers of Newfoundland also contributed to what must have been a
major decline in northwest Atlantic orca numbers. Captain Henry
Mahle of Dildo, Conception Bay was the province's last whaling
captain and reports occasionally shooting orcas off Newfoundland
waters until 1972, when Canada banned commercial whaling. And during
the 1940s and 1950s Norwegian whalers took small numbers of orcas
all around the Newfoundland and Labrador coast. The largest group,
consisting of six orcas, was killed about 90 kilometres due east of
Battle Harbour, Labrador.

In 1979
Memorial University 's Whale Research Group under the leadership of
Dr. Jon Lien began to systematically catalogue the whales around
Newfoundland. About the same time, other academic organizations
along the Atlantic coast began looking at the various types of
whales and the size of their various populations. Orcas were
occasionally seen around Newfoundland and Labrador by lighthouse
keepers, Wildland Tours holiday groups, and other interested
observers, but they never stayed in a given area for more than a day
or two.

For
example, our own anecdotal records and more detailed trip lists show
orcas made brief appearances around the Newfoundland coast
throughout the summers of 1994 to 2007. Every summer observers would
report orcas from places such as the Bay of Islands, Twillingate,
Bay Bulls, Ferryland and Quidi Vidi. The sighting would typically
last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, but the next day
the whales would be gone.

A St.
John's harbour tour boat reported one of the best 1997 sightings — a
pod of six adults with a very small calf. One of the whales had a
seal in its mouth for several hours. The orcas appeared on August 1
off Cape Spear and appear to have frightened off the area's
humpbacks and minkes. No other whales were seen on that day;
however, high numbers of both humpback and minke were consistently
seen — every trip, seven days a week — for several weeks before and
after the orca sighting. It seems that orcas do not always frighten
away other whales; our holiday groups have observed orcas near
humpbacks, minkes, and/or white beaked dolphins on at least a dozen
occasions.

The year
2002 provided some of our company's most dramatic orca watching
adventures. On July 19, Mary Hughes of Connecticut watched a group
of orcas from the Labrador ferry as she participated in our
Viking Trail
Experience tour. On July 25 she was in St. John's participating
in our
Whale
Study Week program when the thirty humpbacks in the area all
started making loud flippering, lobtailing and breaching displays.
The horizon filled with humpbacks doing acrobatics. Minutes later
Mary's group spotted six orcas. The photographic target switched
from individual humpback tails and markings to individual orca
dorsal fins and Mary's group was able to get useful identification
shots of all six animals, including one large male. We now refer to
this group as A-pod.

Mary and
the rest of our party spent over two hours with this group of six,
and added some wonderful new images to our small but growing
provincial orca catalogue. This catalogue is the first attempt at
systematically studying this region's orcas. This particular group
was photographed several times off our portion of eastern
Newfoundland between June to October 2002. After 25-plus years of
field work and regular, intense summer-time whale observation
efforts in this region, 2002 marked the first time a pod of orcas
appeared to stay near shore in the Avalon (southern Newfoundland )
area for longer than a few days.

As our
knowledge of local orca behaviour and distribution grows we have
been able to identify several family groups which have been seen in
Newfoundland and Labrador waters — some over a number of years.
These families are recognized by the dorsal fin photos of the males
plus some of the females. Individual markings are also allowing us
to identify individual orcas.

On July
19, 2002 we received reports of orca pods from Twillingate, St.
Anthony, St. John's, and between St. Barbe and Blanc Sablon. The
distances between these places confirms there is a minimum of four
groups that sometimes occupy Newfoundland and Labrador coastal
waters.

From our
years of observation, it seems apparent that orcas around the
Atlantic followed the "transient" lifestyle reported from British
Columbia and Alaska. Researchers such as British Columbia 's John
Ford found that some orcas, referred to as "resident", remained in
an area feeding off salmon and other marine resources. These whales
tend to be quite vocal and predictable in their movements within a
home range. Other orcas, termed "transients", follow a nomadic
lifestyle, quietly swimming hundreds or thousands of miles in
pursuit of fish, seals, small whales and larger whales. The BC and
Alaska residents are the world's most studied and best known wild
whales. The transients appear to feed exclusively on marine mammals
(seals and whales) while the residents appear to be exclusively fish
eaters. Fish in the salmon family are especially prominent in the
diet of resident Pacific orcas. In the Atlantic, salmon are most
abundant off Greenland and Newfoundland/Labrador. Participants in
past Wildland Tours expeditions have seen orcas spend time engaged
in what appears to be fishing activity near well known commercial
salmon fishing locations; and a link between orca distribution and
salmon distribution does seem reasonable for Atlantic waters.

The orcas
of Norway (eastern North Atlantic) also follow a transient life
history as they move from the fjords of Norway to the coast of
Iceland. Despite having a “transient” life history there are times —
such as when the fjords are filled with herring or salmon — when
transients can be reliably sighted. No "resident" whales have ever
been reported from the Atlantic. Before our own orca research work
started, the coast off northern Newfoundland and Labrador had never
been scientifically surveyed for orcas. This report tells the
on-going story of our research expeditions.

Throughout the 1990s the holiday leaders of Wildland Tours received
occasional reports from government officials and travelers about
orca sightings off southern Labrador. Passengers on the Labrador
coastal supply boats seemed particularly likely to give anecdotal
reports of orcas along the southern Labrador coast. A check with
Memorial University researchers revealed that a dead orca had been
found in the Battle Harbour area around 1995. Reports of orcas from
other southern Labrador coastal communities were also relatively
frequent. And despite low numbers of knowledgeable whale watchers
visiting the more remote portions of southern Labrador, many
travelers reported seeing orcas. Over the years orca reports have
been far more common off southern Labrador, which receives very few
visitors, than off St. John 's or Bay Bulls, where there are
numerous, daily whale watching trips.

With this
in mind, in September of 1997, Wildland Tours accepted an invitation
to explore the restoration of Battle Harbour on the Labrador coast.
Battle Harbour, which has been a fishing port since 1759, is one of
Labrador 's oldest European settlements. It was the major centre for
generations of Newfoundland fishing families until the 1960s, when
it was abandoned. Many of Labrador's coastal (European-settled)
communities have been abandoned, but the amazing architecture and
awesome beauty of the area have inspired Labrador enthusiasts to
restore many of the town's larger buildings. Our general manager was
exploring the site to assess its suitability for future holidays and
especially to look for orcas when she spotted a male and female orca
accompanied by a calf. The whales passed close to the local ferry
that was returning her to the airstrip. Other than this ferry trip
the site-inspection didn't allow for any time on the water looking
for whales. Nevertheless, she did find three orcas!

There is
no mistaking an orca sighting. The males have the largest dorsal
fins in the ocean — as tall as six feet — while the females have the
world's second largest dorsal fins — typically a meter or three feet
high. Two days prior to our manager's arrival in Battle Harbour a
cruise ship reported sighting a large pod of orcas. And during her
visit the local hosts stated that "this variety of whale is here all
the time".

We also
conducted interviews with people from southern Labrador. Many of the
people in the area are of aboriginal ancestry and have a long
tradition of closely watching the ocean. Some people reported that
the whales with the large dorsal fins were seen daily — from late
June to late September. We heard amusing stories of children in row
boats attempting to cross a narrow strait between two islands but
being forced back to shore by the apparently playful rushes of the
orcas. We also heard how the orcas can be seen every day from some
of the hills near the community and how some have occasionally put
on breaching displays for the community's citizens.

We
speculated that we had found the western Atlantic's best area for
reliably encountering orcas; and during 1998 we offered a special
trip to southern Labrador for the historical sights and especially
to begin a preliminary attempt to document orca numbers and
distribution in the area. If there were orcas frequenting the area
then detailed observations would provide useful scientific insights
together with one of eastern North America 's premier whale watching
experiences. (Newfoundland currently boasts the world's largest
gathering of humpback whales. If Labrador can be proven to host a
reliably sighted pod of orcas, then it would be scientifically
important and could form the basis for an incredibly exciting
holiday!) The orcas cannot physically maintain a year-round
residency off southern Labrador since the pack ice moves along the
Labrador coast every springtime and forms a solid mass hundreds of
square miles in size. During the rest of the year our surveying of
travelers and fishing industry professionals suggested that there do
seem to be reliably sighted orcas in the southern Labrador area.
They might not be “resident" however even British Columbia 's
"resident" whales move offshore in the winter so the term resident
does not necessarily mean "year-round".

Our 1998
expedition found two separate family groups (one group of four orcas
and one of five orcas) south of Battle Harbour. Poor weather or poor
viewing locations prevented our attempts at scientifically useful
photography. Our 1998 expedition leader, Dr. Sean Todd (now senior
researcher with Allied Whale at College of the Atlantic in Bar
Harbour, Maine), observed that the orcas appeared to be feeding on
capelin — a small 6-inch fish that is very abundant along the coast.
The orcas were in the company of at least 4 other species of whale
(humpback, fin, sei and white-beaked dolphins). Eating capelin
represents a unique feeding behaviour for orcas, although it is not
surprising given the ecology of the region. In 1999 we started a
formal registry of provincial orca sightings so we could more
systematically study the animals, and we sent a group of adventurous
Canadian businessmen to southern Labrador by helicopter. Three orcas
were seen off the Gray Islands of northern Newfoundland and a small
group (at least three) was seen just south of Battle Harbour.

The year
2000 brought more orca sightings around Newfoundland and Labrador
than ever before. In addition to occasional sightings around the
province's coast, we continued to receive regular reports of
sightings from southern Labrador and also from a portion of northern
Newfoundland in an area almost within view of the Labrador coast. A
local biologist (Paul Alcock of Northland Discovery Boat Tours in
St. Anthony) reported 120 orca sightings over the summer. By July
2001, Wildland Tours groups were again viewing orcas off the
Labrador coast, including one large male that pursued a minke whale
around Red Bay harbour for over an hour. During that same year Dr.
Jon Lien reported a minke and orca cooperatively feeding on herring
off the community of Nain, Labrador.

Given the
strong anecdotal evidence for reliable orca viewing and the success
of our past three in-house orca expeditions, we offered eastern
North America 's first commercial orca watching holiday in
mid-August 2002. That expedition searched the coastline off Labrador
and northern Newfoundland encountering six species of whale together
with caribou, moose, several seal species, and a black bear. Orcas
were reported in the region, but we never found them. Later that
year a group of 30 orcas were reported off Battle Harbour. The staff
at this site had reported sighting large groups of orcas during the
early fall for many years so we adjusted our timing for our next
orca-oriented expedition.

Our
strategy of formally documenting sightings from around the province
also began to lend insights as we concluded that the Grand Banks
(offshore Newfoundland) and the northern Newfoundland/southern
Labrador area are the western Atlantic ’s prime places for orca
sightings. Late August and early September appeared to be ideal
times for near shore orca encounters off the southern Labrador
coast.

In 2004
we continued working with southern Labrador residents, including the
Battle Harbour Historic Trust (the people who turned the area's
restored buildings into basic accommodations), as part of our
ongoing research into Newfoundland and Labrador 's whale biology and
distribution. Our September 2004
Northern Whale
Study
expedition went to Battle Harbour and featured two families of
orcas plus over 10,000 white-sided and white-beaked dolphins. We
were able to catalogue some orca dorsal fins photographically. Our
September 2005 expedition followed the same itinerary and featured a
group of seven orcas — all females and juveniles. We watched them
closely circle and agitate a group of three humpbacks that grouped
closely together to defend themselves. We were fortunate enough to
record the underwater squeals of these orcas and the humpback
trumpets — which were also very audible above the surface. Our
September 2006 expedition featured another dramatic encounter with a
family of orcas and our photographic census research allowed us to
establish that we were observing the same extended family of orcas.
Our 2007 expedition featured orcas preying on white beaked dolphins.
Other orca observers photographed predation events on a white sided
dolphin and a small minke whale. We collected two dolphin dorsal
fins (apparently orcas don’t find them particularly appetizing) and
passed them along to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for
research purposes.

For
September 2008 we will once again be travelling in the Battle
Harbour and Northern Newfoundland regions in order to continue our
humpback census work and also to collect more orca photographs. This
year we hope to once again use our hydrophone to capture more
underwater vocalizations to see how they compare with the orcas of
Iceland, western Canada and Norway. Results from B.C. show that
orcas following a resident lifestyle are far more vocal than the
silent-hunting transient lifestyle orcas. Our Newfoundland and
Labrador orcas could certainly not be considered silent but other
than our 2005 recording, there is no data on their underwater
communications. Thus the vocalizations of the study region orcas
should provide interesting and important scientific insights.

There are
no guarantees of orca sightings since, other than our expeditions,
we still have no systematic, scientific data about whale residency.
There is, however, strong aboriginal knowledge suggesting a high
probability of orca sightings; and all but one of our preliminary
surveys and previous expeditions have proven to be successful with
respect to finding orcas. The worst-case scenario is that Northern
Whale Study participants will have a wonderful whale-filled holiday
without orcas, but all the evidence suggests we will find orcas over
the course of the expedition. The area is typically rich with
humpbacks, and we will be working to photograph as many humpback
tail flukes as possible. According to the researchers working with
Dr. Sean Todd at Allied Whale in Maine, these humpbacks are the
least known feeding population in the world; and scientists continue
to be especially interested in our tail photographs from this area.

The
southern Labrador area boasts other whales, icebergs, great walking,
beautiful scenery, subarctic wildflowers, abundant black bears,
eider duck colonies, varied seabirds, and a rich, historic
atmosphere. This is where Peary used the eastern arctic’s most
northerly wireless set to tell the world about his 1909 journey to
the Pole ("the Pole is ours"). And this is where beautifully
restored fishing homes and merchant warehouses at Battle Harbour
offer a glimpse back into 19th century commercial life. At Battle
Harbour we provide basic accommodations in restored and refurbished
historical buildings together with great food. The second half of
our expedition focuses on the coast of northern Newfoundland where
we venture out into the areas that have provided dozens of orca
sightings a year since 2000. Here we have more modern local
accommodations and food in place — so we can enjoy wild,
whale-filled days and comfortable nights.

We
believe this trip is one of the greatest adventures available on
Earth. The western and northern Newfoundland travel routes include
two UNESCO world heritage sites, the northern edge of the
Appalachian Mountains, and the New World 's only Viking site. Our
southern Labrador route features the 1550 world whaling capital at
Red Bay and the New World 's oldest burial mound. The dramatic
coastal settings and the wildlife populations hold the promise of
transforming our itinerary into the learning and research vacation
of a lifetime. If you are interested in exploring these little-known
parts of the world as part of our quest to document the whales along
the east coast of North America, we invite you to review the
itinerary and join the expedition.

Dave Snow has written numerous
articles and special publications on seabirds, whales, and marine
ecology. Wildland Tours promotes and coordinates the Newfoundland
and Labrador portion of the world-wide humpback whale census. This
population has been found to be the planet's largest feeding
gathering of humpbacks. The study of whale numbers provides
important insights into oceanic health. In 2007, Dave co-authored
the first draft of the Canadian government’s pending status report
document on the orcas of Atlantic Canada for the Committee on the
Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC).